Collected Fictions (42 page)

ESQUISSE

DARNEDEST THING, DON'T YOU THINK
,
the tapping of a hammer in an apartment neighboring yours. Or should say somebody tapping one since there's no hammer next door there, is there, tapping itself. I mean the fact that you cannot, can you, establish in your mind which one. Somebody is tapping with a hammer, somebody has got a hammer and is tapping with it in one of the apartments adjacent to mine, which isn't interesting in and of itself, is it, but is desperately intriguing insofar as the fact that I am sitting here listening and cannot state to you, or to the authorities, if I had to, if it is the residence above me or the one below me or one of the ones to the sides, any of the four of these. Not that I foresee any reason for me to formulate a statement to the authorities. It's just somebody putting in nails in walls for pictures, don't you think, or digging out decomposed grout around a sink. It sounds to me crunchy, whatever it is, like crunchy bone or crunchy skull, what's in receipt of the blows, whatever the object is that's being hit. But this is only, I suspect, because of my foot and because of the bones in it. I did something to them, or to it. Not that it's yet been ratified yet by anybody yet what I did. The site of the damage appears to occupy a locale more or less up and down my leg, it feels like, but I am certain the source of the disturbance was the foot. Pain tends to distribute itself, doesn't it? I think I read somewhere how once it starts, how once pain has got itself a foothold in you, as it were, it can propagate itself almost all over. It hurts in my head, for instance. Yet who is to say this cannot be blamed on the tapping? This head involvement I am just this instant noticing, it could be it is attributable to the tapping I am hearing and cannot be laid at the feet of, no joke or anything, of my foot. Two things I would like to know—what the tapping is all about or where at least it's coming from, and what's the origin of this foot. Not that the knowledge thereof could not be adduced in either instance, of course. Not that a perfectly acceptable condition of knowing would not in either instance be achieved just by my taking action, of course. I could get up from here, make my way out the door, present myself at the doors of all of the probable dwellings. I'm sorry. Gear must have just slipped a notch on me, no? I mean, proposing getting up to go in search of the whereabouts of the hammerer. Foot, you know. Gone and forgotten about foot, you know. Have to take into account I am not the footloose thing that once I was. Besides which, to come absolutely into the open with you on this, the pain seems to have accomplished a beachhead in my head, it feels like, the pain seems to have migrated to my head, it feels like, the pain gives evidence of its being in the process of settling in and sending down roots down inside in my head, it feels like. No, I am hardly, I assert, up to undertaking a quest. It's come and gone, the moment when I might have been up to undertaking a quest. Not that the hammering will not in due course stop. Oh, but look at me, exaggerating the claim from tapping to hammering. Lucky thing for all concerned I just caught myself at it, these exaggerations fingers typing are heir to. Yet in their defense, let it be written, my knuckles commenced to ache in advance of the sentence jogging tapping up to the rank of hammering. In any event, I take it back. So what do you say—the doctor, do you think? Is this your counsel, seek the attention of a professional, do you think? X-rays and all of that, let him palpate the injury? He won't be able to see anything. It's not swollen or anything. It's just that—oh, oh—something inside in there, it's not right. I took, I think, a false step. I balked, is it, instead of kept on with the meter of my walk. It was just a stroll around the block. It was just for the purpose of one's having for oneself a bit of an air-out on one's itinerary around, among other things, the block. Oh, but now look. Now there is none of me that is free of agony. Now is not my entire person the very thing of excruciation?

There's the pounding again.

He's still at it.

Or must I say it continues to be at itself?

I suppose I will never again walk in the manner of a fellow with grace. Even were I to launch an investigation, would I not have to hobble? Limp there, be denied every courtesy, be made to limp myself away onward into deepening offense?

They're slamming now.

My God, they're slamming.

It could be an excavation, it sounds to me like—the gouging out—through tissues of plaster, of tile, of concrete—of a grave.

No, no, it's the building itself!

They are wrecking the building itself, can't you see? It's the demolitionists! Can you credit it?—the dogs have gone and brought in the bleeding demolitionists, haven't they?—whilst here was I, Lish himself, so absorbed in these self-imitations of myself—nay, these self-destructions of myself!—as never to have heard them—but they did, didn't they?—they had to have, hadn't they?—ring, rang, rung my bell.

NO SWIFTER NOR MORE TERRIBLE A CONFESSION

THE SENTENCE I MOST DREAD
hearing is please, sir, step to the side into the street, sir. Or I suspect I should have written it "Please, sir, step to the side into the street, sir," or perhaps, prettier still, in italics.

I don't know why this is.

I don't think it owes to my practice of walking always as far from the curb as I can get. Which means near to the store fronts, near to the shop fronts, and therefore not infrequently straight into the path of those citizens ambling closely along there-along in order that they have an unobstructed line of sight into the dressed-to-the-nines display windows of the United States of American commerce.

But as to the practice I mentioned, I certainly do indeed know what this owes to, yes—
i.e
., which I have taken care to italicize in witness of my dereliction firstmost among the aforesaids—
i.e
., keeping my motion, when it is parallel to the thoroughfare, as distant on the perpendicular as I can get it from the curb, this on account of the cant of the sidewalk.

They cant them here where I live.

For to provide for the run-off into the street.

Of rain, of snowmelt, of what-have-you.
E.g.
, schmutz.

Creating thereby an inclined plane—however slight the elevation of which I see no reason for me not to seize advantage of. For I am short, am of unaverage measure, am of below-average stature—and therefore feel myself ever so much less challenged when passing my fellow humankind if improved, if bolstered, if increased by the not at all dismissable gain the higher ground guarantees me if I seize it.

At least when I am here in the city.

But when do I ever take myself thither from this city? I think never. Yet were I to, it first comes clear to me first this very instant, were I, the undersigned, to venture forth from here into field and swale, into swale and dale, then mightn't I be free, even for the littlest while, of this dreading that so vexes me?

Such an awful sentence.

"Please, sir, step to the side into the street, sir."

"Please, sir, step to the side into the street, sir."

Unless it were to have the power to pursue me into all its cruel transmutings—so that it could become, in its most pastoral use, sir, step to the side into the hollow, sir—or, in its most fanciful, the pit.

Well, it's all a matter of your making room for Eros—between Pygmalion and Narcissus.

Quotes and unquotes all around, everyone.

Yours truly, the author of this.

APPEARANCES

THE ONLY APPARENT GOOD
to come of his encounter with the ravishing Chinchilla Benét was the renewal given to his residence after this person had agreed to consign her body to it for the span of a pair of nights.

He began with the bed, stripping it of its linen and of its various accessories—the mattress pad, the lamb's wool spread that lay beneath the mattress pad, the layer of ruffled foam rubber that lay beneath the lamb's wool spread. The linen and mattress pad he took to his washing machine, adding a dose of his most astringent detergent. The lamb's wool spread he fetched to the dry cleaner, tarrying while the deed was done, all the more promptly to see to the return of this object to his premises so that the great labor before him might be, without undue delay, gotten on with.

The layer of ruffled foam rubber—this he discarded at the service elevator, thereafter telephoning a bedding company for overnight delivery of a replacement.

He poured bleach into the commode and allowed it to stand for the time it took for him to scrub—scour, could we say?—the exterior surfaces of the porcelain.

He thereupon activated the flushometer in order that the way be cleared for a serious exertion on the interior, and then, this task brought to an end, put himself to sleep on the floor of the facility, waking the next day to the bedding company's proof of its promise of reliability, or was it its sympathy that it had warranted?

He could not get his mind to produce the answer.

The only product in it was the yes of the ravishing Chinchilla Benét.

She had said yes to him, yes to him, yes—but presently demonstrated to him the hopelessness in all things uttered once she had lain herself out alongside him in his very soft, very thoughtful, very complicated bed.

"Is there something wrong?" said he. "I'll fix whatever is wrong," said he.

"Oh no, thank you—it is all wonderfully lovely, thank you," said the ravishing Chinchilla Benét, offering the bosom of her pillow—he had retrieved from storage for her his most treasured, his featheriest, example of the sort—a reassuring pat of the hand, a gesture incomparably prophetic of the one the ravishing Chinchilla Benét in due course performed on the elbow of his arm when bidding him adieu at the delightful moment of her departure.

"Was there something wrong?" said he. "I would have fixed whatever might have been wrong," said he.

"Oh no, thank you—it is all wonderfully lovely, thank you," said the ravishing Chinchilla Benét, thence—presto!—with no further ado, exhibiting herself as gone from him, and therefore from his habitation, forever.

Whereupon he, our unnamed tenant, not one whit to his surprise, found himself discovering in himself a certain sense of—ah, the word is triumph, isn't it?—and never a gladness more grateful and intemperate.

AT LEAST THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT LOOK

LISTEN, YOU ARE LOOKING AT SOMEBODY
who just can't wait to look derived. It scares the spunk out of me for me to think they'll come along and look at my writing and say, "Hey, who sent this clown? Where'd he come from? Uh-oh, this goofball, he's not some kind of vagrant Johnny-come-lately, is he?"

Please, I know all about Bloom and that stuff—and, believe me, I'm not saying it's not terrific stuff, Bloom's stuff. But I'm telling you, the one thing you are sitting there looking at when you sit and look at me is somebody who does not want to look like somebody who is exclusively responsible for himself.

Talk about anxiety—as far as I myself am concerned, Bloom did not know what he was talking about when the man was talking about anxiety.

He ever hear of the Anxiety of the Appearance of You Being the Sole Culpable Party in Sight?

Which is why I always knock myself out looking for epigraphs as alibis.

I figure if I can stand my writing right in back of the right writer by citing the right epigraph right up front in front of my writing before anybody has had himself a chance to look at my writing, I can maybe sort of look as if I am sort of maybe guilty, all right—conceded, conceded!—but not without virtue of a certain glamorous affiliation. You know—the forgivably bastard son of, a traceably impoverished relation to. As in, you know, all honor to Bloom, you bet—but, honest, I'm always looking to look as if I am as influenced as anybody can transumptively get. Which is what led me to looking very closely at Wallace Stevens a little bit ago—epigraph-hunting for all I was worth.

Well, I had the notion it would look pretty wonderful on me for me to look as if I had spent some deep time looking deep into the depths of Wallace Stevens.

(Which can have the effect of getting you to believe Wallace Stevens spent some deep time looking deeply into you, you know?)

So when the poems had me stumped (except for a couple or three that probably had me no less stumped but that, anyhow, knocked me flat), I started looking all around inside of Stevens' daughter's selection of Stevens' letters—and, boy, didn't I find there all the wild provocation for wild postures of derivation a fellow as underived as myself could require!

Get this.

The man's wife was named Elsie.

Okay, the fifth-most of the most romantic sensations of my childhood (the first-most I felt in the vicinity of myself, the second-most in the ditto of my mother, the third-most in that of one of my grammar-school teachers, the fourth-most while sitting on the curb gazing at—I admit it, I admit it!—an American coin) was aroused by the name Elsie when I found out it was the name Elsie which was the name of the woman up the block, which woman—O Elsie, Elsie, Elsie!—was my playmate Harvey Weidenfeld's—oh, wow!—mother.

Okay, so now I find out Stevens' wife, his daughter Holly's mother, that she also was an Elsie.

Okay, what next do I find but that that where Stevens and his Elsie first lived here in the city here was where their landlord had Stevens' Elsie model for him so that the landlord—otherwise, in the official manifestation of himself, a sculptor—could enter the result in a U.S. Mint competition for the face that would newly decorate the U.S. Mint's newly-to-be-minted ten-cent piece, which is, you know, remember the coin? Oh, you must, you must!

The dime.

Get this.

It wins.

He wins.

The Stevenses' landlord wins.

It's therefore Elsie Stevens' face that is there on one side of the ten-cent piece that is driving me—when I am eight and nine and ten—crazy with feelings.

Plus which, it's such a swell face, or that version of it is, that the U.S. Mint decides to let it also go be the face that goes on the fifty-cent piece, too.

The half dollar.

So that that face—you get it, you get it?—the face a million years ago my insides were getting themselves all swimmy over—turns out to have been the face of—well, of my derived-from's missus.

But here's the capper, topper, pay-off.

Which is that where they made their residence, the Stevenses, when they first got together as marrieds and first set up housekeeping here in the city here, and which was where Mr. Weinman, the landlord/sculptor I was telling you about, got Elsie Stevens—O Elsie, Elsie, Elsie!—to sit for him for the coin thing I was just telling you about, that where that was, that where (according to a Holly Stevens footnote in the compilation of letters I was, wasn't I, just telling you about) all those goings-on were going on was three doors from the selfsame address where I, Gordon—O Gordon, Gordon, Gordon, shame!—pulled off the most lucrative of my—burgle, burgle—larcenies.

So will you look?

Will you just look at how far somebody will go for him to look as if he is not just any old nameless belatedness but—look, look!—an identifiably indictable one?